The invention relates to an apparatus for coating substrates in a vacuum chamber including a substrate carrier disposed therein and a device for generating a plasma cloud and, further, including magnets directing the plasma cloud onto the surface of the substrates. The device for generating the plasma cloud has an electron emitter and a downstream tubular anode. The anode has an inlet for the process gas to ignite the plasma. Further, the device is provided with magnets for directing and guiding the plasma through the anode tube into the process chamber and including a device for generating atoms, molecules or clusters of the materials for producing a layer on the substrates. Preferably, this is an electron beam evaporator or a thermic evaporator which is disposed directly adjacent to the plasma source and opposite the substrate holder from which the evaporated or sputtered material can be directly applied onto the substrates.
Already known is a plasma generator with an ion beam generator (paper by D. M. Goebel, G. Campbell and R. W. Conn in "Journal of Nuclear Material," 121 (1984), 277-282, North Holland Physics Publishing Division, Amsterdam). This plasma generator produces ions and electrons, referred to as a plasma beam, and is disposed in a separate chamber connected to the vacuum chamber. The approximately cylindrical chamber wall of this separate chamber forms the anode and is provided with an inlet for the process gas. The cylindrical chamber has annular magnetic coils and pipes for cooling the chamber wall. The electron emitter itself is disposed at the one part of the wall which closes the cylindrical chamber and faces away from the actual vacuum chamber.
Another cathode sputtering apparatus is known (DE-OS 38 30 478) where the vacuum chamber has a device for generating a plasma beam and is provided with a target which interacts with magnets which in turn direct the plasma beam onto the surface of the target. It also includes a device for accelerating ions in the plasma beam which arrive at the surface of the target where they eject particles. The latter device has substrate holders which are disposed in the interior of the vacuum chamber to support the substrates to be coated with the sputtered particles. Preferably, the apparatus also includes a device, for example a magnet arrangement, for deflecting at least a split beam or a partial beam of the plasma beam from the target onto the substrate.